When open-air drug markets, the geographic clustering of street-level purchasing and selling of drugs illegally, are introduced into urban environments with high levels of poverty, low levels of education, and gang networks, they act as a tipping point for lethal violence. Drug markets create economic incentives to utilize spatial and interpersonal relationships among gangs for generating income, increasing intense competition between and within gangs. Seattle is an optimal city to examine due to the availability of data and low overall homicide rate, making homicide hotspots even more curious. I evaluate my hypothesis systematically by conducting a bivariate and trivariate regression analysis, utilizing homicide, gang territory, and drug market data. I found that open-air drug markets are positively associated with homicide clusters. Further multivariate regressions will be completed that control for multiple factors where homicides are likely to occur, including poverty, education attainment, population density, neighborhood residence stability, gender, age, and race. This project is important for both scholars and policymakers, as a causal explanation for concentrated violence, or hotspots, will contribute to literatures on urban politics, crime, criminology and help identify ways to decrease the national homicide rate.

Over the past century, most of the highly debated political issues evaluated through a religiously influenced moral lens, such as gay marriage and abortion, have gained legislative support and restrictions were ultimately ruled unconstitutional. With this rise in progressive politics, why has the United States continued to criminalize sex work, another moral topic where women’s bodies and sexuality are heavily regulated? Many Western countries similar to the United States, including Germany, have legalized prostitution in order to support labor rights for sex workers. This paper seeks to examine why sex work is not legal in the United States. Germany will be used as a case study to distinguish why the United States continues to criminalize prostitution. By evaluating American and German history, I conclude that past and present patriarchal laws and culture, molded by a lasting religious influence, have heavily shaped the lens through which Americans view sex and sex work, and therefore establish prostitution laws. In conjunction with a religious and patriarchal society, the creation of the nonprofit sector allowed religious congregations to further their ideals and use philanthropic work as a way to eradicate sex work. Men and women alike capitalized on this philanthropic movement to ensure that sex workers did not disrupt traditional family values and erode the morality of the nation. This fight against sex work has shaped the current goals of anti-prostitution organizations, where human trafficking is conflated with prostitution. This perspective that human trafficking and sex work are interdependent has convinced politicians that legalizing prostitution would lead to an increased demand for human trafficking. Powerful faith-based groups have brought this issue to their congregations and lead anti-sex trafficking organizations and lobbying efforts in the United States. Religious influence on the government has prompted the moral lens through which sex work is viewed and regulated.

Previous research on campus sexual assault has found higher rates of sexual assault committed against members of sororities as opposed to non-affiliated women. Despite this finding, there has been limited research on this topic. This thesis observes the relationship between honor codes that prohibit drinking within the Greek Community on campus and rates of sexual assault. I seek to fill a gap in scholarship by conducting a study of honor codes within the University of Washington Greek Community in order to determine if gender based honor codes increase student vulnerability to sexual assault. I hypothesize that honor codes that restrict drinking are not meeting their intended purpose of preventing students from drinking but rather that they force students to do so outside of their home, which places students in more vulnerable situations. Additionally, I hypothesize that gender based honor codes increase student vulnerability to sexual assault. In order to test these hypotheses, I utilize a combination of qualitative and quantitative data collected from surveys and interviews with students at the University of Washington. I also employ feminist theory and previous research on sexual violence within Greek Communitites. My findings indicate that gender differentiated restrictions on drinking within sorority honor codes reinforce gender structures that have been fonud to perpetuate sexual assault and make sorority women drink in spaces where they may be at a higher risk of sexual assault. 

While the American juvenile justice system has undergone substantial alterations in the past few decades, some practices have yet to face revisions. In particular, girls on probation continue to be largely placed in programs developed to meet the needs of boys, despite facing significantly higher rates of mental health issues and histories of sexual abuse than their male counterparts. Girls Only Active Learning (GOAL) is a new rehabilitative program that focuses on building strengths in areas found to particularly affect adolescent female risky behaviors. The impact of GOAL was measured using a series of three surveys, administered at the beginning, middle, and end of the program. The data was quantified for analysis using nominal levels of measurement—qualitative responses were given quantitative values. The findings suggest that over the course of the program, girls who improved their emotional coping skills also had lower levels of drug and alcohol use at the end of the observation period. Additionally, focus groups conducted with girls who had completed GOAL indicate a high level of satisfaction with the program. Our research supports ongoing revisions to the current state of the juvenile justice system to discourage youth from recidivism, and from later adult incarceration.

This project explores patterns such as racial and gender disparities within the King County juvenile justice system and more specifically, how these issues are resolved or exacerbated by the three diversion programs offered within this region. Juvenile diversion is an alternative to formal court processing for youth accused of misdemeanor crimes. We obtained and compiled extensive data files from the King County Juvenile Court, and analyzed such files over a course of six months. Our research seeks to answer why such patterns of referrals of juveniles arise within juvenile justice system and how these patterns affect the ability of youth to successfully complete these programs. To approach this subject, our LSJ Honors cohort focused on the various actors and participants within this system including attorneys from both sides of the adversarial system, juvenile probation counselors, judges, diversion program supervisors, as well as youth and their guardians.This qualitative research accompanied a quantitative statistical analysis focusing on diversions that took place from 2014 through the end of 2015. Our research concluded with nine key findings revolving around race, completion rates, filing patterns, age, and modes of communication in regards to diversion programs.